I wonder if younger whites in Florida are more conservative than the state's older whites. Many of the retirees came from the the Northeastern US and settled in the South Florida metro, and North Florida might be demographically younger.
I could be wrong, though.
The fastest growing municipality in FL is The Villages, which is in Central FL. This area's retirees mostly came from the Midwest and are thus relatively conservative. As I said earlier in the thread, it is these Midwestern retirees moving into Central FL which has comprised the bulk of new Republican strength in FL.
This whole I-4 corridor boom doesn't make sense to me. Why aren't retirees flooding to Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach like they used to, when those places have beaches and more retirement amenities. The Villages is just humid scrub.
I assume it's because the cost of living is higher in Miami Dad/Broward, and also conservative midwesterners probably prefer small town living to urban life. But it's certainly is humid scrub
One thing to consider if this is the case is that right now, a generation where Republicans did much better with from get go is retiring and they are the biggest generation in history until the current generation.
It's crazy how they are the ones who did the Woodstock stuff in their early twenties but by their early 30s, they were the center of Reagan's coalition. Reagan even had some of the same down ballot problems that Obama did due to being too out of the mainstream for older more reliable voters. In 10 years, they will all be between 70 and 90 years old. At that point, their health will start to fail en masse a few years after that and they will be replaced by a smaller not quite as conservative generation.
There are four ways to preserve the trends these retiring people bring with them-
By 2030, there is a good enough handle on age-related disease that 90 becomes the rule rather than the exception even among those who are fat asses, had multiple cancers, or have multiple missing organs.
Trump actually succeeds in making America "great" again or at least succeeds in regards to retarding the current demographic changes enough to make a difference.
It's truly that old people in general are Republican because they are afraid that Democrats will raise their taxes to fund improvements they "can't afford" on a fixed income.
#WalkAway is an actual thing in Florida.
Then again, Scott always had this perception of being a
#Populist to Puerto Ricans in Florida. In fact, the last time I was down here, I was dating this Puerto Rican girl of whom I was the first boy she dated in several years. She even got arrested for getting in a fight with her ex girlfriend. So you have a 29 year old LGBT Puerto Rican lower-working class woman who said "Scott takes care of us. There was this bullet train he cancelled because we "can't afford" it". She really wasn't that political. Scott always had a reputation of campaigning in communities he was disadvantaged in. In 2012, Pitbull campaigned for Obama. In 2014, he campaigned for Scott. In 2018, while Nelson was being lazy, Scott aired Spanish ads along with his ads about how he would be a good senator because he was so rich and by just falling short of running ads of mangled fetuses with the word "Nelson" scrolling across the screen.
You also have to understand that most Cuban refugees were middle and upper class and that Cubans are no less white than the Quebecois. Seriously. If they are Hispanic, than so am I. The best true way to analyze Cubans is to analyze them the same way you would Italians, Portuguese, Poles, or other "Ethnic" whites that never really ventured out of the Big City or 'burbs in great numbers. With this in mind, a 63% white electorate is a 71% white electorate.
The two other major features are the demands of the growing cities versus the fixed incomes of an artificially graying population. These are the ones that matter. This in turn could create a counter-current as jobs down here pay about average in the cities and 20% less in the burbs. With this being a service industry state, what happens to the cities when the great Olds rush stops? I guess were not a rust belt state at lesst.
Other long term risks are as the climate changes, by the time I am retirement age, Tampa or even Orlando could qualify like Miami and WPB do in terms of having a "tropical" climate. So Florida will be less like Hong Kong and more like Southern India. Will that make it harder for old people?
Will the rising seas really be that much of a buzz kill when you can just move things around? I was living 4 miles inland and was at 22 feet above sea level. There won't be any shortage of the actual map for a few hundred years of rising seas.
